


Safe Haven

by BethNottingham



Category: Terminator (Movies)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Love, Protectiveness, moment of realization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22018729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethNottingham/pseuds/BethNottingham
Summary: A drabble from Sarah's perspective, about Kyle. It wasn't like it was love at first sight after all, so how did she feel about him before the romance started? What did she think about the guy who saved her life, and was then declared criminally insane? Cross-posted to fanfiction.
Relationships: Sarah Connor/Kyle Reese
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	Safe Haven

I knew my terror showed on my face, but I couldn't look away from the bluish screen.

I was afraid because of what he was saying, yes; his description of my inevitable death wasn't exactly something I wanted to hear. But there was another, deeper anxiety; a feeling I couldn't quite wrap my head around because it was so completely nonsensical. I stared at the screen like a spectator at an accident scene, watching fear—Kyle's fear—take over his face.

The whole time I'd been with him that evening, his expression had been some variation of stoic, even when I'd sunk my teeth into his hand and he'd told me coolly that I was hurting him. The only exception had been when he discussed his history; described the death camps, and talked about my son.

He had shown a little frustration as Silverman droned on in his endless, condescending way, but he hadn't really gotten upset until he'd demanded to see me. Now, as his eyes captured mine—even much later, and through the television—terror was written all across his features. He was straining against the men who held him, desperate to get his message across. His message that I was in danger, that I had to be protected. He was fazed—more than fazed, _distraught_ —because _I_ was in danger.

I couldn't look away.

They thought I was afraid of what he was saying—and I was. They turned off the video and apologized, but that wasn't the thing that bothered me the most. I stood there, surrounded by law-enforcement professionals, in a building full of cops, and somehow I felt less safe than I had in a speeding car being driven by a strange guy with a gun.

I felt naked, exposed, completely unprotected, because I was suddenly without Kyle's intense determination—his deep resolve to keep me safe.

The police lieutenant and his crew were a decent bunch, and they seemed nice enough, but they were just doing their jobs. When their shifts ended, my issue would become the next team's problem, even though it would still be _my_ problem, _my_ peril. But Kyle… Even though he was "Assigned to protect me," meaning this was just his job too, he didn't seem to punch a time-clock. Tomorrow morning—assuming I didn't wake up in my own bed and find out that this was all one heck of a weird dream, and I was late for work again like normal—he would still have every intention of keeping me safe.

Of course, his _intentions_ wouldn't do either of us any good if he was locked up on one side of the building and I was snoozing on a couch on the other…

"Try to sleep," the well-meaning Lieutenant Braxton advised me, taking off his jacket and draping it over my shoulders. I curled up on the couch obediently, but when I closed my eyes, I fancied that every footstep I heard was the man—or machine, or whatever he was—coming back.

My idea of a boyfriend usually involved being stood up. I had dated three jerks in a row who couldn't be bothered to show up for dates, and I was beginning to wonder if men just weren't into being places at specified times. But now I began to wonder what it felt like to want to be somewhere, to need terribly to be there, and to be prevented. To be locked up, like Kyle was right now. What was it like, to feel so helpless? I had trouble even imagining the level of frustration. Even if he _was_ completely insane, he clearly believed everything he said, so how did he feel right now? It bothered me incessantly, along with visions of the so-called terminator coming back.

There was no way I was going to get any sleep. I might never sleep again, after this.

And the worst, weirdest, most twisted part of all was that in the optimistic part of me that was trying to convince the rest of my brain that this whole thing was a dream, the faint glimmer of a ridiculous desire had taken root.

Some part of me didn't want to wake up. Because one element of this otherwise horrible nightmare… was Kyle Reese. If this was all a dream, I knew I'd come back to safe, mundane reality, probably to the blaring of my alarm clock, and sigh in relief when I realized that no one wanted me dead.

But I would regret it if Kyle wasn't real.

These thoughts consumed me, I don't know for how long, before the shooting started. I had so thoroughly psyched myself out by that point that I wasn't even surprised, although my heart did pound with fear, and my veins burned with useless adrenaline. The doors in this building were so flimsy, with big windows in most of them. So little stood between me and the _thing_ that had come to ensure my death.

And Kyle wasn't here.

Rushed footsteps approached the door as I struggled quickly to my feet, and my heart was gearing itself up to jump into my mouth until I saw that it was only Lieutenant Braxton. My whole body was still so tight that I couldn't relax, even when I realized that he wasn't the assassin, but rather than say anything reassuring, he simply bolted out the other door with a quick, "stay here."

The guy knew that the situation had just gotten a lot worse. So did I. And again, I was completely alone—feeling undefended, even though the thirty cops that Braxton had told me about were probably all firing everything they had into the metal intruder.

Then the lights went out.

My eyes flickered nervously between the room's two doors, and I glanced at the window. Geez, I thought, if they were going to make the whole room out of glass, why bother with walls and locks in the first place? I dropped to the floor and crawled under the desk, hoping that its angle and deep shadow would keep me from unfriendly eyes. I curled up tightly, alternately staring into the darkness and squeezing my eyes shut as gunfire and screams formed a horrible cacophony of background noise.

After a shockingly short time, the shots and screams decreased in frequency. It sickened me to realize how many police men and women wouldn't be punching out, tonight or ever; wouldn't see their homes or their families or catch their shows or finish their undone laundry… How many people were already dead?

Footsteps approached the door again, and I seized up, holding my breath and praying that it couldn't hear my heartbeat. The glass window shattered, and I heard the lock click open. My previous thoughts about all the glass had been completely right, it seemed.

Shoes tapped stealthily across the smooth floor; their wearer was trying to be quick and quiet at the same time. Panic lodged itself in my throat and upper chest—if it could hear my heart, it must have been hearing something like a hummingbird's wings.

I could never have seen myself in this situation when I woke up this morning. The whole day had spiraled downward, from a bad—and therefore normal—day at work and the disturbing news report over lunch all the way to this; crouching under a desk waiting for a druggie or a cyborg or _whatever he was_ to find and kill me.

And Kyle wasn't here. The alone-ness… _that_ was the most frightening part of all.

"Sarah!"

Kyle's voice.

It was Kyle's voice.

His call was part shout, part strained whisper, like he was struggling between making himself heard and keeping anyone _else_ from hearing him. My whole body felt limp for a moment as the tension keeping me frozen drained.

It wasn't the terminator.

It was Kyle.

His footsteps were heading across the floor again, towards the door.

"Kyle!" I choked out, hurling myself out from underneath the desk and flinging myself into his arms. He grabbed me, intense relief flashing through his eyes before he went back to stoic-mode.

He led me down the rubble-and-body-strewn hallways, through a burning building, running—never quite fast enough—from the bullets of a killer machine, programmed to end my life and the lives of anyone who stood in its way. We climbed into yet another stolen car, and he burned rubber down the highway until the hellish glow of the police station vanished into the skyline. Then we pushed the car off the road and hiked into a drainage tunnel to spend the night.

There was no comfortable couch, no thirty armed officers—just one guy with one gun and an injured right arm.

And I slept soundly that night, passing out less than an hour after I'd found that my fear wouldn't even let me doze.

Because however irrational it might have been, Kyle's arms were my safe haven, and as long as they were wrapped around me, I _knew_ , in the very core of my being, that I'd be safe.


End file.
